


Mutability

by sweetcupncakes



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dubious Consent, Dysfunctional Relationships, Grief/Mourning, Healing, I killed off Mary, Introspection, John is a Mess, M/M, Minor Character Death, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Rough Sex, So much angst, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, mentions of Mary/John, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 07:11:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1973610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcupncakes/pseuds/sweetcupncakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock gets angry and asks why they must they suffer so, John says he doesn’t know.  The universe is unkind, God is unfeeling or nonexistent and this is how you put back together the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mutability

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE refer to the trigger warnings. I wrote this during severe depression, thought several times about posting. I am keeping it up because there are some truths here that I think other people might need to see, and I certainly needed to write.

She’s shot through the chest at dawn. 

Mary had her mug of coffee, as she always does after waking. She’d taken to drinking decaf, breastfeeding and all. 

_“The caffeine molecules transfer to the milk, don’t you know that?”_

John had complained. Felt it was a waste of money to buy two separate tins of Roast and Post. 

_“Or would you rather Liv keep us up all night on a caffeine high?”_

It seems insignificant now, what with Mary’s blood spattered across his night shirt, the bare skin of his forearms, his cheeks. It’s still warm, the blood.

He stares at her body for longer than what he ought to, frozen to the spot, watching as red continues to seep out from the wound. It pools, smells, her mouth gaping open, eyelids peeled back in blind surprise. He can’t move, the gunshot is still ringing in his ears and he hasn’t any idea why his body won’t move. His subconscious has already registered Mary’s limp form as a casualty. It’s triggered him, reminded him of crumbling stone buildings, cowered down into a corner with a gun against his shoulder. A man lying dead two feet away, and John doesn’t go to him at all, because what’s the point? He can’t bring back the dead.

A moment ago she’d poured the coffee, had turned to John and informed, “I’m taking Olivia to feed the ducks after lunch. Meet us there?”

John nodded, stretched, thought about getting the paper from their stoop. He looked over to Mary, an idle glance that meant nothing at all.

Then a bullet carved its way through their window. John blinked at the abrupt splash of blood beating against his skin, it didn’t make sense. When had he nicked himself?

“Oh,” Mary said, brow furrowed, a bewildered expression as she watched her own blood soak into John’s collar. She fell backward, a heavy thud, not so much as a twitch from a finger. The coffee is still steaming, pooling around a hand. An alive person would wrench their skin away from the spot to avoid being burned. 

_I hope it didn’t wake the baby,_ was John’s first thought as he looked down to Mary and knew she was dead. 

The mug she held rocks lazily a few inches away from her limply curled fingers, the stench of blood and freshly brewed coffee floods John’s nostrils. 

What happened? Everything is so quiet, so still that it rings like a silver chime in his ears.

Or, no, it isn’t. Shock just makes it seem. Olivia is sobbing in the nursery. 

In the distance, John hears a siren.

\----

 

“John,” a voice in his ear says, “John, are you hurt? John. _John.”_ There’s someone in front of him and John’s eyes are open, but his eyes aren’t connecting sound, and sight, and reality together. A forehead presses into the line of John’s brow, something soft wisps against his skin.

“I’m sorry.” The voice says, hands gripping his shoulders and pulling back to look even as John stares, perplexed, at nothingness. 

Olivia’s screeching breaks through the haze, starts up some machine inside of John and he stands. “She’s-- She’s hungry. I don’t know how--” John focuses, looks, stares into big, pale eyes. John knows it’s Sherlock, because who else would it be? Sherlock always manages to show up for things like this. Death. “You think she’ll take a bottle? We.. I haven’t got any. She’s only ever breastfed. You think she’ll take a bottle?” he repeats. Maybe Sherlock knows.

“I don’t--” Sherlock purses his lips and shakes his head like he’s just managed to disappoint John so extremely, “I don’t know.” 

Ah, well. Worth a try. “That’s all right,” John tries to reassure, just so Sherlock will stop looking at him like that. 

Sherlock shouts something, at someone, they reply and the words don’t string together in John’s ear, they don’t make sense.

“What’s happening?” John asks, genuinely confused.

Sherlock is crouched in front of him, John is sitting again on the floor and he can’t imagine when that happened. There are people everywhere, police officers, Greg is over in the corner, blue forensic scrubs over his suit. His eyes look red, fingers steepled against his temples, staring at Mary’s corpse.

Sherlock clears his throat. “It was a hit, obviously. Nothing more than a paid hit. I didn’t know. I should have. I don’t know what I missed.” Sherlock looks angrily around the room, his failure surrounding him, like evidence is plastered across the walls and Sherlock is furious that it had lied to him.

“Okay,” John says, somehow he isn’t surprised at all. The past has a way of catching up. Even reformed assassins can’t be the exception to this rule.

What about Olivia, though? She won’t understand. All she’ll know is that her mum left one morning and never came back. She won’t smell Mary’s skin, or hear her lullabies, her mother’s hand will never change her into pyjamas after a bath and--

“God,” John’s skin begins thawing, “Oh, oh god.” He looks at Sherlock again, the sharp lines of his face blurring as tear ducts begin to react. “She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock whispers. John needs to reach out, he does, snatches his fingers into Sherlock’s collar, grounds himself, breathes too quickly and he can’t let go. 

“But, Liv--” oh god, the baby. She’s still off somewhere in another room, crying, crying for her mother and not understanding _why_ she can’t hold her.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says again, doesn’t move even as John’s fingers turn white and go numb from the holding. 

The flash of the camera echoes in the room as they snap frame after frame of Mary’s cooling body.

\----

 

“You should have asked first,” John scolds Sherlock as they stand in Sherlock’s old room. John looks at Olivia’s white cot in the corner where Sherlock’s chest of drawers use to be. “First of all, I’m not putting you out of your own room. Second--”

“We’ll get those toddler gates,” Sherlock waves a dismissive hand toward the dining room that just happens to double as Sherlock’s lab. “Anyways, I’ll be sure to store anything potentially harmful. Or corrosive.”

“No,” John protests even when he doesn’t want to. They’ve spent the last two nights at Harry’s, and even though Harry’s sobriety has been a huge patch on their relationship, they’re too much alike. They’re tempers strain uncomfortably against one another, they aren’t complementary like his and Sherlock’s temperaments. 

John can’t stomach the idea of going back to their old flat. No matter how hard they scrub Mary’s blood from the walls, the floors, it’ll still be there. John will still see it and be disgusted by it.

They can’t stay here with Sherlock. Him, up at all hours, always one experiment away from blowing them all the way back to kingdom come. Running out to cases, while John watches miserably and stays home with Liv. He’s aware enough to know his own selfishness when it comes to Sherlock. He’ll end up either resenting Sherlock for leaving without him, or resenting his daughter for preventing him from running behind Sherlock to ensure he doesn’t get himself shot, and both scenarios are unacceptable.

But this is the only place that feels like home anymore, if any place ever did. Even as he looks at the cot in the corner, and knows the idea is stupid, he wants it.

“I can’t take your room,” John protests, weak, knowing he’s already given in, so consistently being drawn into Sherlock’s orbit like it’s one of nature’s fucking rules.

“It’s already done,” Sherlock says simply, and turns around and leaves. John walks toward the cot, peers at the mobile strung above it. It’s the solar system, John can’t help the tightness in his throat, the silent huff of laughter pushed between his teeth.

He reaches out a finger to prod at Jupiter, the red and orange and white striations of gas painted onto the globe. The planets shiver, they spin idly around the burning yellow sun.

\---

He has her cremated. It seems like the right thing. She hasn’t any family, at least none she’s spoken to John of, and his own meagre family is miles away, estranged. Harry never much cared for Mary. 

There’s no else left to claim her.

Some of her friends call around, ask if there’s to be a service, and he informs them that they’re having a small ceremony, family only.

It’s a lie. They seem to know it, but don’t care enough to say anything.

John picks up the box of ashes from the crematorium, goes back to Mary’s flat. It’s always been Mary’s flat, John’s clothes are about the only thing he brought when he moved in. John sits on the sofa, across from Sherlock. 

Mrs. Hudson has Liv back at Baker Street, surely trying to rock her to sleep as she won’t accept John’s arms for the task. 

He doesn’t quite know how he ended up here with a box full of dead wife. 

Sherlock rests his elbows against his knees, fingers under his chin. “What do you plan on doing with it?” He nods toward John.

Do with _it._ Oh christ. 

“Dunno, what do people usually do with the ashes of their murdered spouse?”

Sherlock looks away, guilt crossing his eyes for a moment. John had actually meant what he said, he hasn’t the foggiest. He’s too numb to criticise and take offense at Sherlock’s abrasivity. 

“Put it in an urn? Dump it--her--in the ocean, perhaps? People do that. I’ve heard.” 

“Toss her off the side of Tower Bridge, yeah? Have any experiments on, requiring human ash?” 

Sherlock looks at him in alarm, it makes John laugh, and laugh, and the box quivers in his lap. 

“John,” Sherlock says softly, “John,” but John puts his hand over his eyes and only realises then that he’s not really laughing. His face is too wet for it to have been laughter.

He has no choice in it, John sets the little box on the coffee table, and then goes about destroying the flat. Sherlock watches, lips pursed, as John shatters crockery, throws forks and spoons and knives like they’re darts, the grocery list with Mary’s tidy cursive is shredded. He thinks to look for his gun, thinks about shooting holes in the walls. But Sherlock took his gun and hid it one night after finding John drunk, lying next to it in bed. 

Disappointed, he snatches the hammer from the drawer in the kitchen.

He’s only stopped when John drops the hammer and begins using his own fists to tear a cave into the plaster of the walls. Sherlock shouts at him, restrains his hands, arms twisting as John tries shaking off the touch.

_“No,_ John!” he pleads. “You have to stop now. You’re hurt,” Sherlock says softly.

“Get off me, fuck you! You _can’t fix this._ You can’t, you, you’re--” and John feels himself shaking in Sherlock’s unyielding grip. The anger, the blame, it isn’t for Sherlock.

John stares at the mess. The destruction is absolute, a neon sign signalling John’s rage.

Sherlock walks him to the bathroom, retrieves John’s kit from under the sink. He cleans the plaster that’s caked into cuts, dabs antiseptic against raw knuckles, the skin peeled back from repeated impact.

John allows this, but only because the alcohol hurts. The physical pain is like an anchor.

Sherlock retrieves the box of ashes from the sitting room, surrounded by broken glass and severed picture frames. “I’ll put this somewhere. If you ever want to.. do something with it, just ask and I’ll fetch it out.” His fingers slide warmly across John’s wrist, cup over his hand. John clutches at Sherlock’s cuff like it’s all that’s left in the world still whole and substantial.

 

\-----

 

Olivia screams all the time.

She wakes up screaming, cries in her sleep, screams at John, and screams and screams, and her tiny blue eyes are bloodshot, horribly tearful. She looks at John and cries, and he knows she’s blaming him, he knows she doesn’t want him. She’ll only take the bottle when she’s gone hours without eating and remembers she hasn’t any other choice, and even then, she struggles as John tries to feed her. He’s got to keep his middle finger under her tiny chin, pushes it up softly to keep her sucking. She spits up the formula.

He holds her in his arms, clutches her to himself because she’s struggling to be free of him and might end up on the floor for all her trouble. Sherlock and Greg carry furniture up the stairs, having transported it from his and Mary’s old flat. John only took the wardrobe, a couple of bedside tables. He gave the rest of the furniture away to charity, along with all of Mary’s clothes.

He had Sherlock do away with her sniper rifle and other various illegal weapons. She’d always argued with John about his sig, wanted it discarded. They didn’t speak to each other for a week when he refused, earlier in their relationship. Then she shot Sherlock, and never brought it up thereafter. She knew John would call her a “hypocrite,” and it would bring up the “thing” they so steadfastly refused to speak of: Her past.

None of the shit was his, anyways. He’d even left that box of photos at Baker Street, back when Sherlock was still dead and John was more shell than man in the wake of it.

John tries to shush Olivia, tries to kiss her red cheeks, and it only make her bellow harder. She has a headful of chestnut brown hair, curls that wind tight to her skull.

It had baffled John, as it all grew in after she was born. Mary caught him looking at it, running his fingers through the tufts that stuck up every which way.

“It’s like mine,” she said quietly, set the folded pile of baby clothes down into a drawer. “My natural colour. The curls.” 

For a sickening moment , John wondered if he had any part of Olivia at all, Mary had lied so much. What’s one more? 

Olivia’s small lips, the hue of her eyes darkened into navy blue, those were his. 

He loves the writhing thing in his arms, it’s awful to love her so much, because sometimes he doesn’t even want to look at her. His mind has whispered wishes, in dark rooms, in the dead of night where no one can hear, that she had never been born. 

The depth of his own self-absorption is nauseating. 

 

She’s going hoarse from the sobbing. Sherlock comes out of the bedroom, stripped down to a vest and his suit trousers, a bit sweaty because it’s summer and Sherlock is a sopping mess in the heat. John mentally adjusts to the image set in front of him as he’s done for ages now. It’s effortless, almost, ignoring the the chemical reaction that sets off inside of him when Sherlock comes to close. Sherlock towels off his hands and steps over to John. Greg fetches himself a glass of water from the tap.

“Here,” Sherlock reaches out tentatively toward Liv.

“That’s all right,” John swallows and looks away, “You don’t have to,” but he’s already handing her over, relieved. Sherlock has only held the baby once before, in the hospital after Mary spent a surprisingly short three hours in labour. He’d cradled Olivia, swathed in newborn blankets, in the crook of a long arm and furrowed his brow at her. Sherlock handed her back after a few minutes of examination with a unsteady cough and a _“She’s beautiful.”_

Sherlock sets Olivia above his hip, she has enough spine control now that she doesn’t need her back or head supported. She’s still sniffling, breathing in little sad puffs of air, but the screaming seems to be over for now. Sherlock walks off toward the kitchen, John can hear him, the vibration of his voice echoing out into the sitting room. He’s singing to her. He’s singing to her, and it’s in fucking French, and John doesn’t know what that song is, but Sherlock does something and it makes Olivia laugh.

He’s furious. He has no idea why the anger is there, but it’s undeniable. She giggles at Sherlock, and it’s a taunt to John. It’s another way that he’s failed and Sherlock has bested him even in this.

John marches back over to them, Liv has her fists balled up into Sherlock’s hair and pulling. Sherlock is wincing, it’s obviously hurting his scalp, but he’s enduring it because everytime he lets out an annoyed, “Ow,” she giggles triumphantly.

John snatches her away. She starts screaming again. John looks once to Sherlock’s baffled expression, then down to Liv’s red face, and feels ashamed.

He still stalks off, the coward he is, sits on the edge of his bed. John rocks his daughter until she’s pushed herself past exhaustion, and falls asleep on his chest. 

Embarrassment echoes down his spine, prickly red and filled with apology.

Sherlock never knocks on their door.

\-----

 

John is standing motionless in the dining room, he can’t move because if he moves that means he has to keep going on. Harry and Clara have taken Olivia for the night, “bonding time,” but John knows they really saw the bags under his eyes and knew he was on the brink of collapse.

John has been standing here for ages. Sherlock has slept for nearly 24 consecutive hours after staying awake for 84 during a case. John couldn’t help much, what with a baby and all. Mrs. Hudson was happy to take her, and did for a day, but John felt bad about it.

Now, he’ll have to go to sleep and wake up and do this all over again, and John can’t, he can’t. Olivia keeps him up all night, and he’s exhausted, he has to go to work, and he’s exhausted, it’s been four months since he’s had Mary’s blood spattered across his chest, and he’s exhausted. He hates Mary so much. It’s all he can think about; how selfish it was of her to go and get herself shot right there in front of him. She left him with a daughter that doesn’t want him, and the memory of life together half built upon lies, and this is _her fault._ He thinks this, and gets all the angrier because it floods him with guilt. It’s not as if she’s here to defend herself. John loved her. He did. He hated her, and loved her.

He can still remember the way she’d make the bed, brushed her teeth, the noises he made when he’d push into her, kiss her and-- _fuck._

_“Fuck!”_ John echoes the thought, sends it out into the silence of the room, and he’s absolutely consumed by it, the fury. He upends the table in some form of impotent revenge, kicks a chair into the wall. He hates himself for doing it, for reaching out to destroy, inflict damage. It reminds him too much of his father, drunk on rage and careless where his fists flew, but it _hurts_ to be still and do nothing. It hurts to exist inside of his body, the isolated borders of his skin, it’s too much. God, it hurts too much, being alone. 

Sherlock runs down the stairs, eyes still bleary from sleep interrupted. He approaches John slowly, like one might a posturing grizzly bear; arms spread in surrender, looking out from underneath his curling fringe.

“John,” Sherlock looks around like he hasn’t the faintest idea what to do with this scene in front of him. “I..”

Oh christ, and Sherlock unwelcome reticence is even worse. It twists inside of John and tips the scale. He doesn’t want soft apologies, or Sherlock’s uncharacteristic carefulness, John needs to fight. He wants to rip, hit, he needs sweat and breath on his neck. He wants to touch, take, it’s been _months_ and he lunges for Sherlock, kisses him too hard in a way that has nothing to do with sweetness or pleasure. He knows, even as he seizes Sherlock, that he doesn’t deserve comfort, he feels his own selfishness like a raw nerve and does it regardless.

He wills Sherlock into reacting, twines his fingers in curls and pulls hard. Sherlock’s breath punches out in a gust against John’s lips. His arms come around John automatically, gripping into his shirt. It makes John feel utterly triumphant, so he keeps crowding Sherlock back, back, until they’re falling down onto the sofa. Sherlock pants and offers up bare skin for John to bite down into, he does, sucks the skin into his mouth and watches the bruises spread like ink blots. He trembles underneath John’s hands. 

“I can’t be her,” Sherlock manages to say, “Everything you’re feeling will still be there after.”

“Doesn’t matter,” John promises, “Just let me.”

Sherlock twitches his hips, eyes darting about and unsure. “Do it,” he whispers, licking at his bottom lip, red and swollen from John’s teeth. “Don’t hate me in the morning.”

John peels off Sherlock’s pants, presses his legs apart and makes another bruise in the hollow of a sharp hip. He sucks Sherlock down, too consumed by his own craving that he doesn’t stop to ask if Sherlock actually done any of this before. It can’t register right now, because he has this man underneath him, and he’s wanted this for so long, before he knew he was allowed. By the time John sorted it out, it was too late. There were plans set in place, a wedding, a baby, and John couldn’t run from his commitments the way Dad had done. 

Before that, there had been half-formed fantasies, the unbalancing tug of want, the spiralling thread of it pulled taught in Sherlock’s direction.

But he could never tell Sherlock. 

Then he couldn’t save Sherlock, not even a little bit. Not at all. 

He’d met Mary and she was warm, clever, open, normal without being boring. She met John when his heart felt more like a graveyard than a beating thing, and loved him in spite of it.

It couldn’t have all been a lie, could it? He’s stuck with all these memories, and they’re so entwined with doubt that it’s driving John mad.

He resented Sherlock, even after the wedding, the baby. Resented him for wanting him in the first place, and every minute spent in his company felt dishonest. Like infidelity. Each time he’d go back to Mary, to their bed, that life, he hated himself a little more. John bit his tongue when Sherlock’s name remained in his mouth like a gun going off. The trigger being pulled, pulled.

John shut himself up. Said to no one that even when he was near Mary, he felt homesick for Sherlock. That feeling of nausea, hunger, empty and full. Bleeding and bled. Of missing a part of his body. Exploding.

He digs his nails into Sherlock’s thighs at the thought of it. Slicks two of his fingers with spit and presses them slowly inside of Sherlock’s body. Sherlock’s eyes fly open, bright and surprised, but then he makes this sound. He cries out, pushes up into John’s mouth and moans helplessly when he comes that way. John can feel his pulse skittering away against his fingertips..

John crawls back up Sherlock’s body, yanks tangled, warm curls,, exposes the line of his throat. Roughly jerks himself off onto the concave of Sherlock’s belly.

.They pant together, two separate heartbeats thudding away in the darkness of the room.

\---

Sherlock pushes out from under John, two hands pressing at his shoulders.

“Need a shower,” he mutters, his footing wobbles as he wanders off toward the bathroom.

The self-loathing sets in immediately, the guilt ramps up in John’s throat. He didn’t even let Sherlock have a chance to touch him back. Outside, the world looks like one flat bruise.

\---

The grief stayed after Sherlock “died.” It settled ominously into John’s chest. Even when Sherlock came back, it continued on in spite of this. The grief was like an infection, creating fault lines where none were before.

Now, the grief has taken on an alien quality, like it shouldn’t belong to him. And even though it’s not a physical creature, it hasn’t any teeth or claws, John thinks it still might consume him whole.

 

\---

In the morning John goes into Sherlock’s room to apologise, but he’s not there. 

One of John’s old jumpers is crumpled into a heap on left side of the bed. Sherlock hasn’t re-hung his frame of the periodic table. The single picture of Mycroft and Sherlock as boys is nowhere to be found. It’s sterile in a way that makes John uncomfortable.

He hasn’t stopped resenting the world long enough to think perhaps, Sherlock too, is sad.

No one, John thinks, should be alone with so much emptiness.

\----

 

Olivia learns how to crawl at 7 months. John comes home from the clinic to find Sherlock lying on his belly, arms outstretched toward the baby. Mycroft sits in Sherlock’s chair, he stares at the baby on the floor like it might, possibly, be a tentacled monster from the fiery pits of hell.

“What’s it doing?” Mycroft leans forward to get a better look. “Don’t let it injure itself.”

“Shut up, you’re breaking _her_ concentration,” Sherlock stretches out a hand and wriggles his fingers to catch Olivia’s attention.

“Your form is really quite terrible,” Sherlock tells her as she rocks back and forth on her knees. “Walking is much easier. Come here,” he clicks his tongue at her like she’s a puppy. She’s shaky, and her chubby little legs don’t cooperate, Liv belly flops a few times, but eventually crawls four feet and immediately tries to chew on Sherlock’s nose.

“Ah. That’s disgusting,” Mycroft says, but he’s smiling a little as he watches Sherlock pet over her hair. All John can do is peek around the doorway and watch. 

“Don’t think you’ll get away with that once you’ve broken teeth.”

John clears his throat. Mycroft composes himself again, stands. Sherlock scoops Olivia off the floor, holds her under her armpits and hands her off to John. “Suppose we’ll be needing to put those gates up,” John says, cradling Olivia while she scrubs at the stubble on his cheek.

Mycroft stops in front of John, looks him over once, and without a word he saunters off through the door.

“What’s wrong with him?” John asks..

“Nothing,” Sherlock says, “Nothing that’s any of his business, anyway.”

\---

John promises himself he won’t touch Sherlock. He doesn’t deserve it, he hasn’t done anything to earn the knowledge of what exactly Sherlock sounds like when he’s gasping. How his mouth falls loose, open, and the blush steals high into his cheeks when he’s touched.

He promises and lies to himself, even as he’s got Sherlock pushed with his cheek to the table, thrusting into John’s hand. Sherlock’s arms are twisted up between his shoulders, and John hasn’t the faintest how he got him this way at all. 

John doesn’t understand how it is that he wants to give affection. Wants to curl around Sherlock and feel the solid comfort of his heart beating against John’s skin. He thinks of the gentle touches he wants to give, and how every time he reaches out, his fingers only crush. Every time Sherlock stands there like an offering, it makes John want to lash out. His frustration materialises as punishing kisses, violet bruises against pale throats. 

It’s agony every time Sherlock offers his mouth, and all John can do is shove him up against a wall, frantic, mostly clothed with a thigh pushed between Sherlock’s legs, rutting against him like some animal.

Sherlock reaches down to knit their fingers together, and John responds by using his palms to clamp Sherlock’s hands above his head like a prisoner.

Maybe it’s the anguish that keeps John from being able to stop. He’s punishing Sherlock because he started this. He was the one that opened up this vein inside of John and let that shard of darkness spread. 

He’s hurting Sherlock, to keep from hurting, but the guilt magnifies the pain into a constant feedback loop.

Or, perhaps, this is simply who John has always been.

\---

 

Olivia’s first word is “Mum,” or technically, “Muh,” but it’s close enough.

She says it one afternoon while they’re on the floor playing with blocks. John tries, desperately, to get her to repeat it, but she only starts back on nonsense sounds. 

There’s no one tell, the flat is empty, and Liv’s Mummy is a heap of ashes in a box somewhere. She’s nothing.

\---

 

After Liv has gone to sleep, John goes upstairs to talk to Sherlock, to explain that this is wrong, that John is sorry, and Sherlock was right. He can’t have both the grief, and Sherlock. There’s not enough room for it..

Sherlock is sitting on the floor in only his pyjama bottoms, examining an old stain on the wood that John had made years ago. There’s a curl resting solicitously at the nape of his neck, still wet from a shower. A drop of water rolls down his spine and sight of it drives John mad. Sherlock looks up at him, must be able to see the nascent violence in John’s posture as he struggles not to hold Sherlock down and sink into him with no care to injury. Sherlock switches off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

They fuck right there, next to the stain. John’s cock slicked from some hopefully not corrosive substance found in the drawer of the bedside table. Sherlock on his back, arching, and his fingers scrabbling at the nap of a rug for purchase, to push back, then finally holding onto the ledge of the bed’s boxspring. They don’t make much noise, needy grunts, half-bitten off moans. Sherlock’s mouth keeps finding John’s name over and over, whispering it shakingly as his orgasm tips. John digs his fingers into the soft pits of Sherlock’s knees, pushes his thighs back toward his body and his hips keep snapping. Taking.

He doesn’t hear his own voice until he comes inside of Sherlock, and even then it’s a terrible sound. A hoarse sobbing noise that speaks of grief, the sinking pain of being too far gone to ask for mercy. 

The muscles in Sherlock’s back go tight, and stay that way even when John pulls out, collapses on top of him and doesn’t let go of Sherlock’s body until dawn.

\---

The dim light of morning spills through the window. Olivia usually will sleep until 8:00 so John has time to get downstairs, get showered, before anyone notices. 

They’re still on the floor, the duvet was pulled off the bed at some point in the night when Sherlock started shivering, and cocoons them both. 

“Hey,” John whispers, “You all right?” 

“Fine,” Sherlock says, and it sounds devoid of any real emotion. He tosses the blanket away, stands naked and looks for his clothes.

John sees the collection of bruises around his shoulders, his neck, where John willed the blood vessels to break with his mouth and tongue. 

“What?” His voice is biting. “Spare me your guilt. Really. I haven’t even had coffee--” then Sherlock’s closes his mouth with a click. His eyes shutter closed and he takes a deep breath, his cheeks pinkening. John looks him over a couple times, then sees it. Sees the translucent fluid creeping down his leg, John’s ejaculate from last night from where he came inside of Sherlock without so much as a discussion beforehand. It’s broken some sort of unspoken rule. Only lovers do that.

 

He swallows, suddenly ashamed. Sherlock clutches his pyjama pants in front of him, and narrows his eyes at John.

“Why are you letting me do this?” John asks quietly, “Why are you letting me hurt you?”

Sherlock’s eyebrows draw down and he looks away, looks toward the scattering of paper on his bed, perhaps for some instructions. At his own hands holding blue and grey striped pants, looking for nothing.

“I’m using you,” John explains, “I can’t keep doing it.”

“Seemed fine about six hours ago. I have the evidence right here,” he adds sardonically, gesturing to the mess dripping from him.

“Goddamnit!” John throws his hand in the air and slams them back down into the floor. Sherlock rolls his eyes and begins turning away. “Don’t you see? I’m--” John pauses, squints in the half light of morning at the plane of Sherlock’s back. “Sherlock, what the hell is that?” John jumps up, wraps the duvet around his waist and spreads his fingers across Sherlock’s skin even as he tries to twist away.

“It’s _nothing,”_ he jerks again but John follows. His index fingers traces the silvered line of scar, it’s linear, a slash. A whip. 

“Someone took their hand to you,” John swallows, and the indignant rage rises in his throat, and he knows in that moment that he’s the worst of hypocrites. “When?”

Sherlock shivers, and for once in a long time John doesn’t reach out to dig deep, only traces the lines with the tips of his fingers. Sherlock’s skin seems so vulnerable in the light, it breaks John’s heart to see it.

“My mission was compromised in Serbia. I was captured. These happened nearly forty-eight hours before I attempted my grand entrance over your proposal. Sorry for that bit, by the way.” Sherlock’s eyes flutter closed when John nudges his forehead between Sherlock’s shoulder blades, lashes brushing against skin.

John never really allowed much talk about Sherlock’s activities during the time he was away. He’d always just preferred to imagine him faffing about in his long coat and rude mouth. It was easier than thinking about Sherlock being strung up, held prisoner, tortured. 

Thinking of him alone in a dark room, being meticulously beaten only makes the situation that much worse. Guilt rises at the memory of flinging Sherlock to floor of that restaurant, apparently pressing him down onto fresh wounds. He’d never wanted to forgive Sherlock, because every _sorry_ felt like a betrayal for those years full of sadness, wanting and not being able to have.

“It’s not normal,” John murmurs, roping his arms around the boyish narrowness of Sherlock’s waist. “I’m not good for you like this.”

“Neither of us are normal.” He’s right, of course he is, but that doesn’t make it okay.

“I should take Olivia,” John says after a few loaded moments, “Get a flat close to the surgery.”

“Don’t,” Sherlock turns around to face John, eye panicked and searching, “You can’t leave again.”

“Sh,” John pets at Sherlock’s ribs, “Sh.”

“Don’t,” he repeats. And repeats. And repeats, until he can’t anymore. 

“You can’t come looking for me,” John tells him. Sherlock says, “I know,” and pushes away, leaves the room and doesn’t say goodbye.

\---

They don’t see each other for five months, and it the worst sort of penance John has ever known.  
No one re-took his and Mary’s old flat, no one likes renting places where ladies were murdered. Plus, John tore those holes in the walls. So.

He finally works up the courage to go through the last of Mary’s things. At the bottom of a locked case John finds a picture of Mary standing next to elderly woman. Mary herself is only recognizable because of her smile, looks barely a teenager. They’re posed in front of the space needle in Seattle, and John wonders if she was from the city. She never said. 

Olivia walks about the living room, her little knees bowed as she struggles with balancing. She holds up a picture of Mary that John had taken soon after they’d begun dating. Mary had stood to call a cab and ended up splattered with mud for all her trouble. 

“Mum,” she babbles, “Mum,” and there’s no way she can remember Mary’s smell or her voice. She was too young. She only knows the face from John pointing it out over and over again in Olivia’s baby album.

John boxes away the picture, a few journals written in various languages, a portable hard drive that he’ll never look at. He feels the briefness of her life, their life together, as he writes _Mary’s_ across the lid of the box in black marker. Once, they had a life laid in front of them. Then it was gone, inexorably rearranged from the scene John thought he knew.

He sets the box high in the closet and promises to never look back there again.

\---

A week later he’s dropped Olivia off at Harry’s and is standing in the middle of 221B, unsure if he’s welcome judging by the tutting Mrs. Hudson did when he knocked at the door.

Olivia’s toys are still strewn about, John can tell Sherlock hasn’t moved them at all since they left. A lump rises up in his throat, all the words that John wants to say and hasn’t. Apologies, confessions that formed on John’s tongue hundreds of times throughout the years, that his lips never realised. He can give Sherlock what he’s always given him; hope. The beating, irrational, heart of it. 

John turns around, Sherlock is watching him from the doorway.

“Hello,” John says.

\---

John takes his time, forces himself to be slow about it, because he still doesn’t completely trust himself. He isn’t completely certain Sherlock trusts him either. He’s done nothing to merit another chance, and they’re so fucking human and predictable the way they keep trying. Trying. So it starts with dinner on Wednesdays, working cases when time and babysitters allow. It starts with earning, learning the ease of laughter in the middle of crime scene, John’s heart swelling bigger than it ever has when Sherlock tucks Olivia next to him on the sofa and reading her a study on the proper cauterization of amputated limbs. Slowly, their possessions find their way back to 221B.

This is, by no means, a traditional family dynamic, but the concept is really just a candy floss invention anyways. It’s not perfect, and they all would hate it if it were perfect. John would hate it if there weren’t arguments over dishes, if the limits of his patience weren’t continuously tested by the contents of their refrigerator. 

Slow becomes a pleasant sort of torture. A frustration with welcome familiarity, and Sherlock feels it just the same. They keep finding reasons to occupy one another’s space, share eye-contact much longer than necessary and each accidental brush of fingers over mugs of tea seems like the prelude to something far less timid. They talk, sometimes, the upsetting conversations that make them both squirm in their seats because it’s hard. It’s hard being open, fighting against defensiveness and years of denial. When Sherlock gets angry and asks why they must they suffer so, John says he doesn’t know. The universe is unkind, God is unfeeling or nonexistent and this is how you put back together the pieces. 

 

He took a semester of philosophy in university. Mostly he was trying to get off with the EA, but Aristotle stuck in his mind like a splinter. He’d written that you’d suffer over the mysteries of life, and will never learn anything new. The past always slips into you. Islands of people fell asleep looking to the sea, and never crossed its waters. Those who ruled you above, will rule you below. 

But the hunger to try in spite of all of it, is beautiful.

 

Slow finally culminates into _now_ at noon on a Thursday. Olivia’s napping in her cot upstairs after getting sick all over Sherlock’s silk shirt. John brough a stomach virus home, and really Sherlock had it coming seeing as how he’s the only one in the house who hasn’t spent twenty four hours with their head over the toilet. 

“What’s the point in feeding her corn if she doesn’t digest it? This kernel is completely intact.” Sherlock examines the mess as buttons are slipped through their holes. 

“She likes it,” John shrugs, runs warm water over a soaped rag, “You think we ought to soak that?” He motions toward the shirt Sherlock has shucked off of his shoulders, John gives him a once over and smiles. 

Sherlock leans forward, presses his mouth to John’s. Soft, undemanding. Does it again, drops the shirt on the bathroom floor and hooks a finger into John’s jeans pocket.

John lets Sherlock tug at his clothes, drag him through the frosted glass door of the bathroom and into the bedroom. They’re on the bed and John is able to nose between the dip of collarbones, and Sherlock smells quite a bit like toddler vomit, but it isn’t even close to being off-putting. In fact, it’s excellent, John lies on top of Sherlock and smears their bodies together. Sherlock gasps softly, little open-mouthed _huh_ sounds, that John has never heard before. Hasn’t taken the time to hear, and it’s a bit astounding, the tenderness of that sound. Sherlock cards fingers through John’s short hair, holds on tight until little pricks of pressure along his scalp has John cursing and smiling against Sherlock’s lips.

“How is that?” he pulls tighter, uses his grip as a sort of leverage to thrust up and rub against John, “You like it. I can tell.” 

The moment encompasses everything, and without the grief and the anger acting as a sort of dampener, John can feel everything like a nerve splayed open and exposed to fresh air. It’s shocking and raw, and the steady hammering of Sherlock’s heart clattering against John’s own ribs is the only thing in the world. The string-roughened tips of Sherlock’s fingers work John eagerly, and when he shuts his eyes and comes, it feels like a reprieve. It feels like wholeness.

Sherlock’s body shakes all over, his eyelashes are wet and John can feel the moisture of it when Sherlock buries his face in John’s neck, pulsing hot and slick in his hand with a whimper.

John turns to kiss at his throat, the corners of mouth, his lips. Sherlock moves his face closer to the hum of John’s affection, asks him only to stay. If this is suffering, then he’s happy to do it. 

“Okay,” John says, exhales hard and holds tight to the man next to him. “Okay.”

\---


End file.
